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Comcast Targets Internet "Abusers"
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."
When they come to you and say "you have been abusing your 'unlimited' download quota"? Do you ask them to define what 'unlimited' means? Or do you simply pack up and get another ISP?
I have that issue with my (dialup) isp, that the isp itself has an unlimited policy, but they forwarded me a nastygram that *they* recieved from their upstream provider during a month where I was downloading iso's heavily.
So, having other things higher on my to-do list, I let it go; but I'd like slashdots' opinion on how you handle it when "unlimited" means "unlimited up to a certain point"?
They should do something about all those spammers using their service. Seems like about 20% of the spams I run through SpamCop resolve back to Comcast as the email source.
We accept there is no service-level agreement, we accept that we're lower on the food-chain than companies who pay a lot more for their bandwidth, but when a company makes a secret, arbitrary decision to cap you, it gets a bit hard to accept.
If it were advertised that you get 512/128, xx GB/month, with a charge of $Y for every 10GB over that, everyone would know where they were. This unfortunately will not happen while there is no regulation of how companies advertise their service. If company A says the above, and company B *does* the same, but doesn't say they do, then B will get more customers - all of whom will be pissed off when B caps them...
Regulation is the way to go.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Wouldn't this be considered false advertising though? I mean if you say unlimited you can't just go back on it because it isn't economically feasible. If a company told me I had unlimited bandwidth and then sent me a letter that I exceeded my bandwidth limitation I would be pretty irate. I would be especially pissed because not only are they employing false advertising, but even their own AUP that they refer to makes no mention of a bandwidth limitation.
if you figure it costs the ISP about $20/month/incoming line it is difficult to make money off someone who is online every night thoughout peak usage.
When Dialup ISPs first started the rule of thumb was 20-25 customers per line. Not long after you needed 1 line per 8 customers. I would bet it got worse later.
The "abuse" is not the upstream bandwidth it is tying up the line.
AnonyCow sez: "Consumers demand to be lied to."
WRONG.
SOME consumers ALLOW themselves to be lied to. The rest of us should not have to expect it just because of them. I demand honesty from those I deal with. If someone's lying to me, they're lying, and the fact that they gtet away with it with some idiots is no reason to excuse it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
A lot of dialup providers have always sold 'unlimited' dialup with the footnote that unlimited equates to a maximum of 12 hours a day and maximum connection time of 2-4 hours in a session.
I suggest charging a minimum fee for the connection itself and start charging more for the service used.
The phone companies (as much as we love/hate them) have a pretty good system worked out for $20/mo you get a local phone line that includes emergency access and whatnot.
ISP's could probably swing a connection for $20/mo with (oh I don't know) 50-75 gb of transfer. Best to make it symetrical traffic too. Then, when someones goes over it, charge them per gb of traffic.
This addresses a few problems:
* People complaining highspeed is too expensive
* ISP's taking a hit because not many people sign up
* People/ISP's happy with a balance of traffic vs billing
- Dan
Comcast has a HUGE problem right now with hundreds (if not more) of virus-compromised systems, run by the clue-deprived who have not the slightest inkling about the most basic Internet security.
These machines have long since been compromised, and turned into spammer 'zombies.' The problem has gotten bad enough that I've blocked access to our mail systems from ANY system with a domain name ending in 'client.comcast.net,' not to mention huge swaths of Comcast-controlled IP space.
If this 'crackdown' that Comcast is doing helps to get rid of a bunch of these spammer 'zombies,' great! It'll be that much less to worry about.
Granted, if Comcast's so-called "Abuse Desk" even gave a crap about the massive amounts of bit pollution their network is pouring out, they wouldn't have any problems with "abusers" to begin with.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
... if it's available in your area. I have two DSL providers, DCAnet and, of course, Speakeasy. I love them both - they're always great to work with and are very responsive to my needs. I have two lines, a Covad and a Verizon, through DCA and one Covad line through Speakeasy. I've never once had a problem with either, and I've had these lines for a combined total of 5 line-years.
I routinely exceed what comcast calls a "reasonable" limit (30GB/month down and 7.5GB/month up, wasn't it?). Not only do I exceed that, I blow it away - never heard a peep out of either of them...
I have a theory about why Comcast is trying to choke off their Internet users. They recently had to double the downrate to compete with DSL, thinking that offering twice the downstream would make the extra expense worth it... However, they're also trying to ramp up their On-Demand movie service, which is far more profitable to them. So, it makes sense to try to reserve as much of their shared bandwidth as possible for movies rather than for Internet users. I would not be surprised in the least if they lowered those caps at some point, as there is a finite amount of information a single shared cable can carry...
Just a thought..
Uhm okay, I don't know who the fuck thinks it's funny to plaigiarize my writing, but I am the original author of this essay. I wrote it on January 8th of this year, the original text can be found here.
;)
Hmm. I don't know whether or not to say "mod parent down!" After all, it got a freakin' +5. In a way, now I almost wish I thought of copy/pasting my rant to Slashdot first. A pity. Could have done wonders for my karma
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
"Comcast and several other cable firms are doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits per second"
From google: (1 terabyte) / (3 (megabits per second)) = 1.0632985 months
Therefore, before they raised their caps, it would take you over two months to download one terabyte. Afterwards, it would *still* take you more than a month.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.